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Show CSEDULTTY AND SUSPICION. . i ' Ts'ew Tork Press. Some time ago a sailor went along the cross streets of lower Broadway offering to innocents special lots of pure Hava? na cigars which he had been enabled to get into New York at greatly reduced prices. It is the familiar gag amug-gling. amug-gling. But the cigars, the rottenest on earth, find ready sale, becaase there are but fear honest Americans who do not like to get something for nothing, or at least for half-price. My old friend. F. J. M., managed hy hook or crook to secure se-cure a box, and went home with the treasure under his arm. I think th price he paid wss $17 a hundred, worth $33. Of course he breathed it to only his dearest friends. He felt aa virtuous virtu-ous as a millionaire -who had Just sworn off his taxes. In his home this F J. M. has a Jar that was dug up in Cyprus in the ancient an-cient days, one that Mr. Morgan would give a fortune for. After trying to draw a suspicion of Havana, smoke through seven of the "stlnkadores," he placed the rest in this Jar, saying to his wife: "If in my absence any friend cares to drop in for a cigar and cares to help himself to the best I have, let him go to the Jar." The expected victims not being trapped. F. J. M. nailed the box to a tree on the street corner and attached at-tached this sign: "Free cigars; help, yourself." A large part of the community commu-nity passed by in- the course ot three or four days, and paused to look and read, but not a man permitted himself to open the box and take a smoke. Finally two small boys slipped up in the night and appropriated box and contents. If those cigars had been Saxby per-fectos per-fectos they would have been Just as safe. You remember the story of the man who stood at the corner of Wall street and Broadway offering genuine silver dollars to passersby at 90 cents, and in ap hour's time failed to dispose of a single one. Human nature is a strange admixture of suspicion and. credulity. cre-dulity. Every man that stopped to look at the dollars made up his mind instantly in-stantly that they were spurious, and mentally pronounced the vendor a fraud and swindler. |